


Honorary Anderson

by Seroia45



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Gavin needs a fucking hug, Gen, Post-Pacifist Best Ending, The Author Regrets Nothing, no beta we die like men, the family au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seroia45/pseuds/Seroia45
Summary: They didn’t talk about it.They saw each other every day, but they would never talk about it. It hurt too much to bring it up.But as far as Gavin “Phcking Asshole” Reed was concerned, Hank Anderson was the only father he's ever had.





	Honorary Anderson

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted Gavin interacting with Cole, and this is how my brain decided to go about that. As always, any helpful comments and criticism is much appreciated. :)

They didn’t talk about it.

They saw each other every day, but they would never talk about it. It hurt too much to bring it up.

But as far as Gavin “Phcking Asshole” Reed was concerned, Hank Anderson was the only father he’s ever had. But they don’t talk about it. Everything changed after Cole was killed in the accident. It hurt too much for Hank to hear Gavin call him dad when he’d never hear his baby boy call him that again. So, for Hank’s sake, he stopped.

It hurt Gavin too much that he had moved on from (or at least learned to function with) his grief, while Hank hadn’t. But all he could do was sit back and watch him fall apart.

~  
  
Gavin was seventeen and a wild card when he met Hank. He’d run away from home, again, and was sporting a large, painful bruise over his left eye. ( _Why can’t you be **useful** like your brother?) _ He was ready to pick a fight with someone, anyone, and it just so happened to be an off-duty cop at the bar he’d snuck into. Hank had put him on the ground easily, offered his hand to help him up, and asked him if he wanted to talk about it. They sat in Hank’s beat up manual (which at the time meant a stick shift) and talked all night about Gavin’s piece of shit father and perfect older brother. Unfortunately, though Hank tried, he couldn’t get Gavin’s father arrested for child abuse.

Hank’s home quickly became the place Gavin would run to when he was afraid his father ( _That sonuvabitch ain’t a father to you. He’s nothin’ but a sperm donor.)_ was going to kill him. Gavin was there when Hank met his wife, and he had watched them fall in love. He’d jokingly called her mom once, and she had beamed so brightly that he just continued doing so. He called Hank “Pops” once, joking about Hank’s age compared to his soon-to-be wife’s, and thought he was going to get put on the floor. Instead, Hank just smiled a little, ruffled his hair, and muttered, “Whatever you say, kid.” It stuck, and Gavin finally had a family. He stood right next to Jeffrey Fowler when Hank and Lexi got married, and he most certainly did NOT cry when they said their “I do’s”.

He DID however, cry, when Hank asked him to be the godfather to his newborn son. And again when Cole wrapped his tiny little and around his finger for the first time. It didn’t take long for Gavin to be absolutely wrapped around that little boy’s finger.   
  
EVERYONE cried when Cole’s first, fractured word was a high pitched little “Gafin!”   
  
Hank, Lexi, and Cole where all there when Gavin was sworn into the force, and Hank patted him on the back and took him out for drinks afterwards. He took him out for drink’s again when he was finally able to put his father behind bars, for Red Ice possession. Cole, the sweet little three-year-old he was at the time, didn’t understand why his big brother was crying, and pushed his favorite plush toy into Gavin’s hands. Gavin definitely cried like a bitch.  
  
When Cole started school, Gavin was always the first to pick him up if Hank and Lexi where busy and would take him for ice cream every other weekend. One time, they ran into one of Cole’s classmates, and the five-year-old grabbed Gavin’s hand and dragged him over to meet her. He grinned and said “This is my big brother, Gavin! We don’t have the same last name, but he’s still my favorite brother!” Never mind the fact that Gavin was his **only** brother, he _still_ cried like a bitch about it when he told Hank later. It was a badly kept secret, but Gavin would _gladly_ take a bullet for that kid.  
  
And not many people knew this, but Gavin felt just as guilty for Cole’s death as Hank did. It wasn’t fair. He got by with just a scar on his nose. Why did his baby brother have to die? What did that sweet ray of light in his and Hank’s life do to deserve to die?  
  
After that, Gavin and Hank started to argue, constantly. Gavin developed anger management issues, and Hank developed a drinking problem. Lexi couldn’t cope with the fighting anymore and left Hank. She stopped calling to check in on him the seventh time she got drunken, angry screaming instead of words. She still checked in on him through Gavin though.

They got divorced a few weeks before the anniversary of Cole’s death. Hank took up an odd fascination with Russian Roulette. Gavin let his anger- at his father, at Hank, at the ice, at his brother, at himself, at the android who couldn’t save Cole- control him. He started to despise androids with everything in him. He started to resent the man Hank had become. He started smoking. And three years went by like this, and Hank and Gavin were as good as strangers.

And then in walked RK800, designation Connor.

He hated Connor. Because he was an android. Because he looked too much like what he thought Cole would’ve looked like had he been able to grow up. Because he was another reminder that he would never live up to his brother’s achievements.

But he did owe him one thing.  
  
After Connor showed up, Gavin started seeing the man Hank was before the accident. He begrudgingly accepted that this plastic prick could do something for Hank that he never could. He could help put Hank back together. Help him put the gun away. Help him believe in something again. Even if it was a fucking revolution.

And Gavin started to like Connor, just a little bit. He couldn’t help how he came about any more than Gavin could. So he guessed they were that much alike. And if he and Hank secretly planned a birthday party for Connor, only they had to know.

Connor, however, was much more open to show how much he cared about the detective he saw as a brother.  
  
No one at the precinct but Jeffrey knew about how close Gavin was to Hank’s ex-wife. And he wasn’t the one that put the report on his desk. So everyone was in shock when Gavin came in to work one day, opened the case file, and promptly shoved his computer screen off his desk and had a breakdown.  
  
Connor was the first one to get over to him. Suddenly, Gavin was being led to the break room and pulled into a hug. Connor walked him through breathing exercises to get his heart rate and breathing back in order, before he asked him what was wrong. Hank had gone to Gavin’s desk to see what made him flip out. He walked in with the file before he could answer. The only mother Gavin had ever known, and the love of Hank’s life had been killed in an accident. That night was the first night in a long time that Gavin and Hank went, got drunk, and bawled their eyes out together. Connor went with them, knowing how quick the two of them were to do something fucking stupid, and made sure they got home and in bed alright. And when Gavin had another breakdown the next morning, Connor was right there to help him through it.

Not two weeks later, on the day Cole would’ve turned ten, a manila envelope was on Gavin’s desk when he came in. The outside was entirely blank, except for his name scrawled elegantly across the front. He opened it, and inside was a simple little memory stick. He stuck the thing in his (new) work computer- it was firewalled and protected against every possible virus, so what was the harm- and hit play when a video popped up.   
  
A hospital room, with a woman holding a tiny, newborn child and two grown ass men falling to pieces in absolute joy. A park, a couple, their adoptive son and their biological son, and an energetic St. Bernard puppy. An ice cream parlor, and two brunettes separated by decades, laughing over tales of their dad being stupid. The whole video went on this way, a compilation of Cole’s life through the eyes of Elijah Kamski’s androids. Gavin was in tears by the time it ended. Then he heard his name come out of his brothers mouth for the first time since he left to found Cyberlife.

Elijah talked about how he had stumbled upon a clip of him with the Anderson’s on accident and dug into it. After seeing how incompetent Lieutenant Anderson was with a video camera, he decided to make a compilation of every possible moment he could find with Cole in it, knowing how much it would mean to Gavin and Hank to be able to have more than just a photo to remember the boy by.  
  
It wasn’t until the third time watching through the video that Gavin noticed something strange. Every clip had a date and time in the bottom corner. This particular clip was of Cole holding an android’s hand and looking up at them as they walked with them. The audio was muffled and staticky, but Gavin could hear Cole asking about him and Hank. The android shook its head, and Cole’s eyes welled up with tears. The android crouched to his level, wiped the tears from his face, and pulled him into a hug.

The date and time were twenty minutes after an android told him and Hank that they couldn’t save Cole.

Gavin leapt over his desk with the memory stick in hand and was at Hank’s desk in seconds. And suddenly the precinct was in chaos. Gavin dialed a number he hadn’t even looked at in years, and Elijah was on board to help before Gavin had fully explained what was happening. He made some tweaks to the primary objective and capabilities of an android he had found abandoned in Cyberlife tower and typed in the activation code.

Icy blue eyes blinked open, with one objective in mind. Find and bring Cole Anderson home.

“RK900, register your name. Nines.”

“My name is Nines.”

And just like his brother, Nines always accomplishes his mission. The day Connor met his little brother for the first time, was the same day that Gavin saw his own little brother for the first time in four years.

~

They didn’t talk about it.

They saw each other every day, but they would never talk about it. It hurt too much to bring it up.

But as far as Gavin “Anderson” Reed was concerned, there was never a time when Cole wasn’t in his life. The four years the boy was thought to be dead didn’t exist.

He looked at the picture frame on his desk and smiled. A family portrait of Hank, Gavin, Connor, Nines, and Cole. Hank had his arm slung around Gavin’s shoulders, Nines was standing much too rigidly (but he was smirking a little, so that was an improvement), and Connor was grinning, his hair in messy curls from where the ten-year-old on his shoulders had used it as a handle. And Sumo, sitting still for once, in front of them.

Yup. There was no universe where Gavin would ever admit that there was a time when he wasn’t a part of this family.


End file.
